


Drive

by JHSC



Series: The Ultimate Kidfic of Ultimate Destiny [3]
Category: Marvel Cinematic Universe, The Avengers (Marvel Movies)
Genre: Bad Parenting, Child Abuse, Divorce, Dysfunctional Family, Emotional Manipulation, Emotional/Psychological Abuse, Family Issues, Physical Abuse, SHIELD, SHIELD Academy, Ultimate Kidfic of Ultimate Destiny 'verse, WIP
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2017-03-12
Updated: 2017-03-12
Packaged: 2018-10-03 04:09:08
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 7,770
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/10235558
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/JHSC/pseuds/JHSC
Summary: How Maria Hill loses everything, finds SHIELD, and finds herself.





	

**Author's Note:**

> _Sometimes I feel the fear of the uncertainty stinging clear_   
>  _And I can't help but ask myself how much I'll let the fear take the wheel and steer_   
>  _It's driven me before, and it seems to have a vague, haunting mass appeal_   
>  _But lately I'm beginning to find that I should be the one behind the wheel_   
>  [Incubus, "Drive"](http://bit.ly/2mVZ9UB)
> 
>  
> 
> Note #1: This is a companion fic to [Landslide](http://bit.ly/2my1xy6). At this present moment, you do not need to have read Landslide in order to read this fic. I'll let you know if that changes.
> 
> Note #2: This is one of two Landslide companion fics I am working on right now, and it is very, very much a WIP. It will focus on Maria's life - her family, her choices, her growth, and her dreams - and her relationships with Nick Fury, Natasha Romanov, and others.
> 
>  **WARNINGS** : See all those tags up there? They are up there for a really fucking good reason, and the reason is the direct description and portrayal of emotional abuse, physical abuse, and manipulation of a child by a parent. If those subjects are a trigger for you, please proceed with caution. If you could not watch "Tangled" the whole way through, this fic may not be for you. That is okay. Please take care of yourself. If you feel there is a tag that needs to be added, please let me know and I will do so.
> 
> Also THANK YOU to Laura Kaye, Westgate, and desert-neon for the beta help!

When Maria is 12, the company her father works for is sold, and her father quits his position in protest of the sale, of the new management, and of NAFTA in general. Hoping to leverage his old company’s clients and business contacts, he starts his own business out of their home in a suburb of Chicago.

He used to leave for work every morning before Maria and her sister woke up, and only came home at night after the kids had eaten dinner, just in time to help them with their homework or drive them to karate class. Now, he’s suddenly around all the time. His papers and product samples take over the dining room, the Tandy computer running Microsoft 3.1 and a 20 kbit/s modem hooked up to the family phone line.

Maria’s mother starts to get more and more tense.

Her dad starts going out at night, coming home late, sleeping on the couch.

Sometimes, when Maria can’t sleep, she sneaks out of her room after everyone else has gone to bed and watches old movies with her dad. They laugh at Charlie Chaplin, the Three Stooges, Vincent Price, Cary Grant. It’s the only thing that makes Maria feel normal anymore.

*

When Maria is 14, her mother sues for divorce. The business failed, she tells her daughters. Their father has been stealing money from her. Cheating on her. Going to bars, getting drunk, getting the family into mountains of debt.

Maria and Christina believe her. Why shouldn’t they?

Her dad moves out and gets an apartment a mile down the road. Her mother tells them that he’s having women over, that they should report on everything they see and find when they visit him there. She loads them in the car and drives past his apartment slowly, watching through the windows to see who he’s with. They see his car parked in front of a bar, and she sends Maria to sneak inside and see what he’s doing.

Maria and Christina go along with it. Why shouldn’t they?

(Her dad sees them. Of course he sees them. He sees everything. But he never says a word).

Maria’s mother tells the girls that their father never wanted them, that he’s happy to be free of them. He’s ashamed of them. He’ll never accept them. He’ll never be good for anything but the child support money that he hates to pay.

Maria and Christina, as always, believe her. They haven’t seen their dad in months, after all. Their mom switches the girls to a different karate dojo, and promises not to tell their dad which one. Now they can practice in peace, she says, without having to worry about him barging in during practice and causing a scene. Or showing up with his new girlfriend. Or showing up drunk.

He misses their next tournament. Their mom says she gave him the schedule, so he must not care enough about it to come. Christina cries in the locker room, and Maria sits next to her on the bench, fuming about the unfairness, the neglect, the silence. She channels all of her emotions into winning the tournament.

She does, and qualifies for the state semifinals.

Then the finals.

Then she’s going to Nationals, and her mother tells her to write to her father and demand he pay for the trip, the hotel room, the competition fees, the new uniform.

Her dad drops off the check in person. Maria takes the envelope and slams the door in his face. Her mother laughs, and hugs her.

*

When Maria is 17, she goes to Nationals for the final time, ready to say goodbye to the sport, to competition, to the only time when she feels like she can _breathe_. She won’t be doing this in college.

There are colleges that offer martial arts scholarships. Especially to a girl who’s made it to the top three at Nationals four years running. But her mother says she’s still broke from the divorce, can’t even afford application fees, doesn’t want to fill out the FAFSA and tell the government how much money she makes. (When Maria points out that her mother works for the state and they know how much they pay her, Diana slaps her. The sound echoes through the dining room and her mother winces, shaking her hand out.

“Sorry,” Maria says).

Her mother says that her dad won’t pay for anything more than the local community college where Christina’s taking part-time classes. Maria’s going to have to do the same, Diana says, and keep living at home, and get a job at the grocery store. It’s time Maria started paying her way, after all.

Maria goes to Nationals for the last time on her father’s dime, medals for the last time, refuses to talk to the coaches or her team members or the committee about her future plans, where she’s going from here, a rising star obviously meant to go places. She shifts the conversation, she deflects with ease, but she can’t quite manage a smile, even though her mother is watching sharp-eyed from the stands. She knows she’ll pay for that, later.

It’s important to smile at strangers, her mother always says, especially when they’re asking about her life. She wouldn’t want people to think she was raised by a bad mother.

Maria’s last karate class is the Wednesday before her high school graduation. She helps pick up around the studio, afterward, putting mats away and sweeping up the dirt and gravel that always accumulates by the front door. She’s not quite ready to leave.

“Maria,” Mr. Saito begins, when she puts the broom back in the cupboard and then just stands there, staring, unseeing, at the buckets and cleaning supplies. “I know you’re set on going to Harold-Washington in the fall—”

“—my mother is set on me going to Harold-Washington in the fall, Sensei, you know that.”

“You could go somewhere else,” he says, as if this is the first time they’ve had this conversation. His tone is light, and she knows if she turns around she’ll see his bright eyes looking at her like she can do anything. “You know you are good enough for the University of Chicago. They would be happy to have you in their political science program and send you to the Foreign Service, smiles on their faces.”

Maria bites her lip. It’s a thought she’s had time and again over the past year, but the obstacles just seem… insurmountable. She lets out a sigh and turns around, but doesn’t look up. “It’s the grocery store and Harold-Washington, Sensei.”

“Okay, okay,” he says. “Harold-Washington, fine. But no Dominick’s. You come work for me, instead, take the fourth- through sixth-graders off my hands on Thursday evenings and answer the phones during the day. Okay?”

She’ll have to present it to her mother the right way. Make her think it was her own idea. Make her think Dominick’s is a bad move — What if her dad starts shopping there just to see her? Christina works in the back room away from the public, but if the only open positions are in the front end, where her dad could find her any old time… It might be doable.

“Thanks, Sensei. I’ll think about it,” Maria says, and closes the cupboard.

It works. Her heart’s in her throat the whole week, but she drops the slightest of hints, gives the faintest of nudges, and leads her mother down the logical path until she says, “I can’t believe you haven’t asked Saito to just let you work in the dojo. Honestly, Maria, I’ve given that man so much money over the past few years, it’s about time you took some of it back.”

Then in August, when Maria still hasn’t received her scheduling information from HW, she calls the school on her lunch break at the dojo to find out why. And they tell her they never received her registration fees.

She calls her mother at work, her first mistake. “I thought you sent the check?”

“You were supposed to ask your father for the money, Maria,” Diana snaps back.

“You never said that! You told me you were going to send them a check!” Maria remembers the conversation very clearly. She’d spoken to her mother at length about the admissions process. They’d even gone through the paperwork together, and right there on the checklist had been, _Mom sends check._

“Not until after you got the money from your father, and you knew you were supposed to ask him for it.” That was decidedly _not_ on the checklist. The only time Diana mentions her ex-husband nowadays is to call his new wife a whore and a homewrecker.

“You never—”

“I can’t believe you’re blaming me for this when _you_ were the irresponsible one. This hurts me, Maria. It’s exactly the kind of thing your father would do,” Diana says, and then she hangs up.

Maria stares down at the telephone receiver in her hand. One thing. One thing her mother needed to do, had promised to do, in order for Maria’s life to start, and she wouldn’t do it. The earliest Maria will be able to start school now is the spring semester, maybe. She’ll have to check the paperwork again — with her luck, she’ll have already missed the spring admissions deadline.

God, she wants to punch something.

Mr. Saito comes into the room a few minutes later, while Maria is furiously taking notes on a legal pad. She needs to call a few of her high school friends and see what their living arrangements are for the fall, whether they have space for another roommate. She needs to get a bank account solely under her name and close the one she shares with her mother. She needs to look into getting another part-time job, to fill the empty hours in her schedule she was planning to use for classes and homework. She needs to read up on the FAFSA and find out how she can qualify as an independent student, so that her parents’ income doesn’t matter.

“You are writing very intensely,” Mr. Saito observes. “Is something wrong?”

 _Other than everything?_ Maria thinks. Out loud, she says, “I’m done letting my mother sabotage my life. I’m moving out. And if I can’t get into the Foreign Service, I’ll find somewhere else I can make a difference. Somewhere better.”

“Ah,” Mr. Saito says, his voice as gentle as his smile. “I have a few ideas about that.”

When she gets home, she doesn’t tell her mother her plans. Diana refuses to speak to her, anyway, so she wouldn’t be able to explain even if she wanted to. Instead, Maria shuts herself in her room and surveys her belongings: what she’d need to take with her in a hurry, what she’d want to take if she could, what she could leave behind until later. The items that fit into the first category — her birth certificate and Social Security card, her nicest dress clothes, her address book — she packs into a duffel bag and stows at the bottom of her laundry hamper.

Three days later, Mr. Saito asks her to stay after the last class of the evening. “I have a friend you may want to talk to, now that you are making your own choices about your future,” he explains. “I knew him back when we were both much younger men. I send a few students his way, every couple of years. Only the best, though.”

“Like who?” Maria asks.

“Oh, now, let’s see,” Mr. Saito says, and wanders over to the wall where he hangs the group photos of every graduating class he’s taught over the past thirty years. He stops in front of the class of 1990 and points at a tall teenaged girl in the back row, curly dark brown hair pulled back into a high ponytail. “There we are. Donna. Brilliant strategist. Just before your time with us began, I think. Too bad, she would have been a good friend to you. Maybe you will get the chance to meet her in the future.”

Maria stares at the photo. Donna is smiling proudly, looking straight into the camera. She looks like she doesn’t have a care in the world. The black belt around her waist tells a different story, though, and Maria can’t help but feel the stirrings of curiosity. Mr. Saito regards all of his students highly, but it’s rare for one to get quite that much praise.

Something in the room changes, suddenly, and Maria spins around, fists raised, to see a tall man standing in a dark corner of the room. She’d locked the front door when the last of the students left; how did he get in?

“She’s good,” the man says, chuckling as he walks toward them. He’s about 6’2”, medium build, around fifty years of age, black, and behind his leather eyepatch he’s smiling like something is hilarious.

“I told you she was,” Mr. Saito says, stepping up next to Maria and laying a gentle hand on her shoulder. Maria relaxes, trusting her teacher. This must be the person he wants her to meet. “Why do you never believe what I tell you?”

“Gotta see for myself,” the man says. “Make sure your standards aren’t slipping.”

“Pah! My standards are better than yours, and you know it. As are my manners.” Mr. Saito gestures between the two of them. “Maria Hill, meet Colonel Nicholas Fury of SHIELD.”

Maria blinks, and Colonel Fury grins wider and asks, “You’ve heard of SHIELD?”

She glances at Mr. Saito, and he nods at her; it’s safe to answer honestly. “While I was researching the Foreign Service, it came up. But there didn’t seem to be any way to apply to join, so I discarded it as a career option.”

“That’s because people don’t apply to become SHIELD agents, Ms. Hill,” Colonel Fury says, smile falling away. “They are only recruited.”

Maria stares at him, and thinks about the small scattering of facts she learned about the secretive organization during her research; a little bit about what it does, a little bit about who founded it (Peggy Carter, the true Peggy Carter, not the one from the damn movies). She thinks about Mr. Saito, and his other student, Donna. She asks, “Is this a recruitment, then?”

Colonel Fury cracks another smile and glances over at Mr. Saito, who’s wearing a matching expression. “That’s up to you. Let’s talk.”

In the end, it’s not a hard decision at all.

She’ll be able to get an education — on her terms, at her level, in the subjects she cares about — that will enable her to pursue the career she wants. Even if she decides to walk away after completing SHIELD Academy, she’ll have a bachelor of science degree under her belt. If SHIELD isn’t for her, no one can stop her from going into the Foreign Service as she’d originally planned. No one can stop her from getting exactly what she wants.

It’s… terrifying. Amazing. Unbelievable. Impossible.

Maria takes a week to think on it, to make sure the decision is solid — that she’s not just acting on her anger, jumping at the first opportunity to get out of Chicago and her powerless life. In that time, she bounces between terror and elation twice an hour, it feels like. She goes to work in the mornings and her heart lifts when she catches Mr. Saito’s eye. She goes home in the evenings, helps Christina make dinner, and feels like the absolute worst person imaginable for even thinking of abandoning her family.

The guilt morphs back into resolve when her mother gets in from work. Ever since the phone call about the registration fees, Diana refuses to speak to Maria. Instead, she glares, stomps around the house heavily enough to make the entire first floor echo with her footfalls, and talks to Christina as if Maria isn’t even there.

It’s her normal reaction to a perceived insult from someone; Maria’s already been on the receiving end of this treatment a half-dozen times this year. Usually, the only way to make things go back to normal is to tearfully apologize. Beg for forgiveness. Self-flagellate until Diana’s ego has been appeased; when all your pride is gone, and all you have left to define yourself with is shame.

Maria doesn’t do that, this time. She’d called Colonel Fury today and told him yes. After that, she can do anything.

“I’ve been accepted into the training program for the Foreign Service,” Maria says, when dinner is basically finished but the dishes haven’t been cleared, yet. It’s the best time to share news, when everyone is feeling slow and fed and satisfied.

Diana and Christina’s heads shoot up to gape at her. Surprisingly, it’s the latter who speaks first. “I thought you couldn’t get in without a degree?”

Maria shakes her head, and starts in on the cover story Colonel Fury had supplied her with, to protect her and to protect SHIELD. “It’s a new experimental fellowship they’ve designed for recent graduates. I’ll be able to transition into a degree program next year, and then enter the service two years after that.”

“I didn’t realize you had applied,” Diana says coldly, placing her fork on her plate without a sound and pushing it a few inches away. “I thought you had your heart set on Harold-Washington. I thought that was your _dream_.”

Maria swallows down the hundred different responses she could give — that HW was _never_ her dream, that HW was impossible now that her mother had sabotaged it, that there was no way her mother could ever begin to understand her heart. She takes a breath, and says, “Since I wasn’t able to start HW this fall, I remembered this program and called to see if they had any spots available. They did, and they offered it to me. I accepted.”

“Christina, go upstairs to your room,” Diana says.

“It’s my turn to wash the—”

Diana turns to shoot a glare at her older daughter, whose protests immediately cut off mid-sentence. Christina gets up from the table and heads for the stairwell, not daring to risk a sympathetic glance backward.

“How am I supposed to afford this?”

“It’s a fellowship, Mom,” Maria lies. “There’s no cost.”

“No cost,” Diana scoffs. “No cost, except room and board, and all those extra expenses they don’t tell you about. Are they going to let you work while you go there, or am I going to have to be sending you checks every month when you run out of money?”

“It’s all comped, it’s part of the—”

Diana stands up from her seat and leans forward, bracing her hands on the table to loom over her. “I can’t believe you would do this, Maria. I can’t believe you would hurt me this way. I was counting on you to start bringing in a paycheck, pulling your own weight around here and helping to support your sister, and instead you decide to abandon us, to _screw us—_ ”

Between the implications, and the tone, and the body language, Maria starts to feel sick to her stomach. “I’m not trying to—”

The table shakes from the force of Diana’s palm slamming down on it, and Maria jumps. “I am so tired of your selfishness. All your life, it’s just been take, take, take with you. I have given you everything you have ever needed, and just once, just once, I ask you to do something for me, and instead you throw me to the wolves.”

The words hit their mark. Maria’s eyes well up — she can’t stop them, she can never stop them — and she chokes out, “Mom, that’s not what this is, this has nothing to do with you.”

“No, of course it doesn’t, you never even thought of me when you were off making your little plans.” Diana straightens, and throws her hands wide as she announces, “Well, think again, little girl, because you’re not going anywhere. Not if you want to be a part of this family.”

“But I’ll be able to get a job, a really good job, Mom, in just a couple of years—”

Diana shakes her head. “I’m calling that Saito in the morning and telling him he can find another little princess to sweep his floors. Your sister says there’s an opening in her department. You’ll go work at Dominick’s until you’ve grown up enough to handle college, and I’ll be the one to decide when that is.”

“Mom—” Maria tries, one last time.

“I don’t want to hear it!” Diana snaps. “Your behavior is what got you into this, Maria, don’t start crying now when you only have yourself to blame.”

Maria puts her head down and slides out of her chair. She skirts around her mother, trying to stay out of reach, aiming to get out of the room as quickly as possible before she breaks down. God, she doesn’t even know why she said anything. She doesn’t know why she bothered. Every time, this is what happens every time, this is how she feels every time.

“It’s your turn to clear the table and do the dishes,” Diana says from behind her.

Maria stops, one foot on the bottom stair. She turns. _Autopilot engaged_ , she thinks as she walks back to the table. She stacks all the dirty dishes into a pile. She carries the pile to the kitchen. She fills the sink with hot, soapy water. She puts the leftovers in tupperware. She washes all the dishes and all the pans. She scrubs down the counters and the stove. She drains the sink. She hangs up the washcloth and the kitchen towel.

She walks out of the kitchen. Diana is sitting on the couch, watching the news with a clenched jaw. She’s supposed to go in there. Sit next to her. Watch the news. Absorb the pointed commentary, the sharp asides.

She goes upstairs to her room. Puts on her running shoes. Pulls her duffel out of the hamper. The single strand of hair she’d tied across the zipper is still intact — it hasn’t been opened, its contents are safe.

She walks down the stairs and straight out the door.

Three alleys, two jumped fences, and six blocks later, she’s stalled in the middle of the sidewalk, internally debating whether to call Mr. Saito, or Colonel Fury, or hell, even her dad, for help. Maybe get a room at a youth hostel downtown; she’s got some money saved.

She’s still brainstorming when a black SUV pulls over just ahead of her, and a tall, curly-haired woman in a dark suit steps out. Maria notices her, but doesn’t think anything of her until she calls out, “Miss Hill?”

Maria freezes. A cop? Her mother seriously called the cops? She takes two quick steps to the right, bringing her closer to the open doorway of the nearby storefront. There’s a freestanding display she can knock over to block the woman’s path, and these places always have an emergency exit opening into an alley.

“I’m with SHIELD,” the woman says, smiling gently as she walks closer. “My name is Agent Rozniewski. You can relax.”

“Can I?” Maria asks. Agent Rozniewski smiles again, and something about her is familiar. “Wait. Donna? Mr. Saito’s best student?”

It _is_ Donna, and she blushes, just a bit, high in her cheeks. “He and Colonel Fury had some concerns about your family’s reaction to you joining SHIELD. They asked me to keep an eye on you. You pulled a good runner — I almost lost you twice.”

The reality of the situation, suspended for those few moments, crashes back down. Maria staggers with the weight of it, the adrenaline drop, the emotional agony. Darting forward, Donna catches her before she can hit the ground. Her grip is gentle, despite its underlying strength.

“Let’s get you off the street, yeah? You’ve had a busy night.”

Maria nods, and lets herself and her bag be hustled into the back of the SUV. She pulls herself together enough to ask, “Where are you taking me?”

“For a milkshake,” Donna answers, latching her seatbelt and turning the key in the ignition. The Backstreet Boys start playing on the radio. “And then a nice, private hotel room all to yourself, where you can watch _Spice World_ on Pay-Per-View five times, if you want.”

“Why?”

Donna frowns a little, like she’s considering how to answer, and glances over at her. “Because you’re SHIELD, now. And at SHIELD, we take care of our own.”

*

Donna comes to Maria’s hotel room at nine the next morning with breakfast in two styrofoam containers and a stack of paperwork in a large plastic file folder. Maria’s been up and showered since seven, anxiety gnawing in her gut. She’d called Mr. Saito at eight, giving him a run-down of the previous night. All he’d said was to trust Donna, and to call him tonight when she’s gotten things figured out.

“Thought you might be hungry,” Donna now says, setting everything down on the table in front of the expansive window overlooking the Chicago skyline. “We can eat, and get your paperwork for the Academy all sorted out. And then, if you want, you can come with me to drop everything off at the local field office. Get a first look at SHIELD’s inner workings.”

Maria nods. Donna frowns at the obvious lack of enthusiasm, and Maria flinches — what if she makes the wrong impression and gets herself kicked out of SHIELD before she even begins? What will she do, then?

All Donna says, though, is, “Pancakes or French toast? I got an order of each, wasn’t sure what you’d like.”

Maria glances at Donna, and then over at the boxes, uncertain. She’d kill for some pancakes right now, but… “Whichever you want, I don’t care.”

“All right,” Donna says, shrugging. She passes one of the boxes over, and Maria opens it to find three slices of French toast. Something must show on her face, because Donna asks, “You want to trade?”

She shakes her head and picks up the plastic fork that came with the meal. “I’m fine. Looks good.”

It takes two hours to finish breakfast and go through all the paperwork that will start Maria on the path to becoming a SHIELD Academy student and, eventually, agent. Then, they’re free to head into the office, which is apparently housed in a nondescript building downtown with a partial view of the Chicago River.

The facade is crumbling a little, and the atrium they enter through has more than a few cracked tiles that probably haven’t seen a fresh application of grout since the fifties. Likewise, the elevator doors are brown and dingy, the garishly out-of-date carpet not without a few mystery stains. Donna swipes her ID card over the “Up” button, and the doors open to let them in.

Through long practice, Maria keeps her opinions, doubts and worries — what has she gotten herself into? — off of her face as the doors close behind them and the elevator grinds into gear. Donna doesn’t say anything about the state of the building she works in, doesn’t apologize or make a comment about government money and fiscal priorities. Just stands there and waits.

Then the doors open, and Maria steps into an office straight from the 21st century.

The entrance — the _real_ entrance — to the Chicago SHIELD office is a brightly lit hall with high ceilings, shining chrome fixtures, exposed steel beams and tinted glass walls. It’s space-age and industrial, a design that says, _We built this city with welders and cranes, and now we’ll defend it with rocket science and supercomputers._

“Better?” Donna asks after a moment, pulling Maria out of her architecture-induce reverie.

“Yeah. Yeah, this is better,” Maria replies, glancing over. “Feels a lot more… SHIELD-y.”

Donna’s smile deepens. “Come on, let me show you around.”

They tour the atrium, the training rooms, the viewing area overlooking the range, the operations center (only a quick glance, because, “Agent Blake hates an audience”), and the analyst bullpen. They end up in Donna’s office, which is tiny and overlooks the bullpen rather than the outdoors, but it has three computer screens on adjustable arms mounted to the wall and the most comfortable desk chair Maria’s ever encountered.

“So, what do you think?” Donna asks from her own visitor’s chair, leaning back to tip the chair onto its rear two legs and set her feet on the edge of her desk.

“Are all the SHIELD offices like this?”

Donna tilts her head left and right; not a yes, but also not a no. “Depends on the base. Some of our bases are tiny, not more than a secret bunker out in the wilderness, stocked with ten-gallon drums of pancake mix and powdered orange juice. And then our largest base is practically its own city, with its own water treatment plant and everything. Chicago’s right around the middle.”

“How many bases are there?”

This time Donna does shake her head. “No idea. We have bases and offices all over the world, but I don’t think any one person knows about all of them.” She stops, considering. “Maybe Director Pierce. Almost definitely Colonel Fury, though I wouldn’t ask him about it.”

“Will he be mad?” Maria asks. She’d gotten a good read on Fury last week, she’d thought, and anger doesn’t seem to be his MO.

Donna chuckles. “No, he’ll just tell you a seemingly unrelated story and expect you to figure out the metaphor yourself.”

“Oh,” Maria says, and leans back into the desk chair. The chair really is absurdly comfortable. It might be worth joining SHIELD just for this chair.

She spins it a little bit and surveys Donna’s desk. Anything classified or sensitive has obviously been put away ahead of time. There are a few blank forms in a tray over to the side, next to a stack of blank legal pads and some pens, and a framed photograph. Maria leans forward to look more closely, glancing over at Donna for permission.

“Go ahead,” she says, and watches as Maria picks up the frame. “Those are my friends and I, right before we graduated from Ops.”

The photo shows a group of five people struggling to fit on a couch in what looks like a rec room or TV lounge. They all look to be in their early twenties, and they’re all either laughing or pulling ridiculous faces. Donna, the tallest, is easy to pick out. Then there’s a short, muscular white woman making an exaggerated kissy-face at the camera. Next to her is an Indian or middle-eastern woman in a blue hijab, who has her arms wrapped around a grinning Latina woman. The latter has her elbow driven into the side of the blond white man next to her; from the expression on his face, the shutter must have clicked just as she made contact.

They look happy, and accomplished, and perfect. Maria can’t imagine how she could ever get to that place. Their lives must be perfect, to have gotten them all so far.

Donna leans over the desk and tilts the frame so that she can point to the people in the people in the picture and explain, “That’s Meredith. She’s an only child, and her parents think she went into the Peace Corps. Any time one of us is sent on a trip to Africa, we send postcards to them for her.”

“Really?” Maria asks, bemused. “They haven’t caught on?”

“If they have, they aren’t talking. Anyway, it gives them something to brag about at church dinners if someone brings up Meredith’s misspent youth.”

“Huh,” Maria says, wondering precisely how misspent Meredith’s youth could have been.

“Then next to her is Lraaz. Lraaz has three younger siblings who are all doctors, and the family thinks she’s slacking off by becoming a SHIELD agent.” Donna lets out a wry laugh. “She can speak ten languages and hack through the best encryption software on the market in minutes, but she hasn’t completed a residency at Johns Hopkins, so it doesn’t count.”

“How can it not count?”

“They had certain expectations,” Donna says, and there’s no judgment in her tone, no anger. Just resignation. “Lraaz didn’t fulfil them. It’s up to them to figure out how to deal with that. Lraaz is just going to keep on living her life, being the bossy older sister to everyone she meets.”

A smile sneaks onto Maria’s face before she can stop it. “Everyone?”

“Well, almost everyone.” Donna points back to the photo. “That right there is Rosita. Lraaz definitely doesn’t want to be _her_ sister.”

The smile fades, and a flush creeps up Maria’s neck instead, nearly choking her with it. “And everyone’s… okay with that?”

There’s a slight pause. Maria keeps her eyes locked on the picture, but she can see Donna shift her weight a little, before she says, “Of all the agencies and armed forces, SHIELD is probably the queerest. Well, at the least the most openly queer. Nobody sitting on that couch right there is straight, and nobody tried to hide it.”

Another pause. “Well, okay, that’s not totally true, Clint had a boyfriend who wanted to hide it. It didn’t work out very well for him, and it messed Clint up pretty badly.”

“Oh,” Maria says, stomach clenching. She doesn’t know how to respond. She tries, “What did his family say?”

“When Clint came to Ops, he didn’t have any family,” Donna explains. Her voice is gentle now. “And the rest of us, we couldn’t rely on our families the way we wanted to, for one reason or another. But no matter where we came from, we all came from the same place, we have that same perspective. So when you ask me what Clint’s family thought about his terrible first boyfriend, I can tell you that Rosita wanted to kill him, Lraaz wanted to publicly humiliate him, and Meredith wanted to fill his gym locker with anchovies.”

“What did you do?”

“I fed Clint pie and Gilligan’s Island reruns until he cheered up. Happiness is the best revenge, after all.”

“Do you think…” Maria thinks of her mother, of her sister, of the father she hasn’t seen in years. “Do you think I could find people like that, too?”

“I think you’re already starting to,” Donna says. She gently places the frame back in its place of honor on her desk. Then she smiles again, warmly, and asks, “Ready for lunch?”

*

“Your mother has called me six times today, asking where you are,” Mr. Saito says, making Maria wince. “She says, ‘Saito, I am so worried about my baby girl, I miss her so much, please tell her to come home.’ I say, ‘I understand, Mrs. Hill, but she is not here. I will tell her if I see her.’ So there, now I have told you. Let it never be said I do not keep my word.”

Maria leans back against the headboard of her hotel bed and pulls her knees up to her chest. Donna treated her to dinner again, then dropped her back here afterward, with instructions to _do some thinking, make some calls, and do some more thinking_. She’ll be back in the morning.

“I don’t know what to do, Sensei,” she says quietly into the handset. “She just… she won’t listen. And I feel like… if I give her the chance to stop me, she’ll take it.”

“You need to try, Maria,” Saito says. “At the very least, you need to call her and let her know that you are not at the bottom of the lake. Your mother has quite the vivid imagination.”

“I know,” Maria replies, rolling her eyes. “By now she probably thinks I’m pregnant and have run off with drug dealers.”

“That may have been one of her suggestions, yes. What are you so afraid will happen when you talk to her?”

“She’ll yell at me.” God, it sounds so stupid when she says it like that. As if it were normal yelling. As if it were only yelling. It’s never just yelling, though. “And then next thing I know, I’ll be crying, and apologizing, and resolving to go home. And this will all be over.”

“Funny thing about the telephone,” Saito says, voice light and wily, the way it is when he’s telling her that breaking a stack of three boards is no big deal. “If someone starts to yell, there’s a very simple way to make them stop.”

*

The phone rings and rings. Maria finds it ironic; if Diana were so worried that her younger daughter was kidnapped or murdered, she’d be camped out next to the telephone and grabbing the receiver the moment it made a sound. Instead, the phone rings through until the answering machine clicks on. Maria waits through the outgoing message and the beep, and then says, “Hey. It’s Maria. I’m calling to let you know I’m–”

There’s a clatter, the sound of the receiver being picked up and the answering machine cutting out, and then Diana says, “What are you doing calling from the Hyatt? What makes you think I have the money to pay for you to play around in a place like that? You run away from home like a little—”

Maria interrupts, “I am calling to let you know that I am fine, and safe, and you don’t have to worry.”

Diana scoffs, and then she begins. Maria braces for the assault. “I have been worried, I have been crying, I have been sleepless over you Maria, I had to _call your father_ , don’t just sit there and tell me that you are fine and that I should stop, you have put me through quite enough.”

“I didn’t mean to put you through anything, Mom. I just needed some space, so I spent the night somewhere else. I’m eighteen, I—”

“Oh, you’re eighteen and you think you’re an adult now, you can do what you want with no consequences? You can steal my credit card and get rooms at the Hyatt—”

“I didn’t— I didn’t steal your credit card!” Maria bursts out, losing the calm she swore she’d keep through this awful conversation.

“Well how else are you paying for that room?” Diana demands, and Maria realizes she’s been set up.

“Don’t worry about the room, I didn’t steal your card and you won’t get billed for it,” Maria says, gritting her teeth. She doesn’t know how to get the conversation back on track. She doesn’t know where she even wants that track to lead.

She’s pretty sure she knows what to expect, though.

“Don’t worry about the room, don’t worry about where you are, you’re eighteen now, so I don’t fucking matter, I’m not your mother anymore, that’s what you’re telling me,” Diana rants.

Maria wonders if she could make bingo cards for these occasions — a square for when Diana calls her selfish, a square for when she brings up money, a square for when she comes out with some wild accusation. What does she get when she wins?

She tries to reason with her one more time. Just one more. “That’s not what I meant, Mom, I just meant—”

“No, no. This is all about you and your selfishness and your little dreams. You don’t want to get a job and help support this family, you want to do your own thing, and fuck what your mother has to say about it—”

“You’re yelling at me, so I’m hanging up now. Goodbye, Mom.”

The click of the phone into the receiver echoes through the room, despite how gently Maria tries to set it down. She doesn’t want SHIELD to get billed for a broken hotel room phone, after all.

It’s the first time in her life she’s hung up on her mother. It feels… good. Terrifying. But. She was already terrified. Now she feels strong.

She counts to thirty. Then fifty. Then one hundred. And hits redial.

Diana picks up on the first ring. In measured tones, she says, “I am not yelling. I am perfectly calm now.”

“Okay,” Maria says. “I’m sorry I hung up on you, I just needed—”

“I am perfectly calm now. I’m fine. I won’t worry about you at all. You are perfectly safe and happy. You are doing your own thing.”

That even tone of voice makes the hairs prickle on the back of Maria’s neck. She’s never heard her mother talk like this before, not for years. The last time was when Diana talked about the divorce, about the things she’d said to Dad to get him to leave. “Mom—”

Diana continues, “I’m sure you’ll be very happy at school and in your new life with your new friends. I won’t complain anymore. I won’t call you anymore. I won’t be your mother anymore.”

Maria freezes. It’s nearly the same words, the same speech. “Wait, Mom, that’s not—”

“If that’s what you want, that’s what you’ll get. I’m done.”

Diana hangs up. Knowing her, she’s already unplugging the phone. Coming up with a cover story. Packing up Maria’s things.

Maria wonders if this is how her dad felt.

“Bingo,” she whispers, and wipes her eyes.

*

Donna comes back in the morning, hands her a takeout box filled with pancakes, and says, “Your mother is parked in front of the hotel, and your sister is hiding in a corner of the lobby.”

“Really,” Maria says flatly. She sets the box down and stalks out the door and down the hall. Her room is on the fifth floor; she takes the elevator down to the lobby level, and as soon as the doors open — yep, there’s Christina, shooting out of her hiding place, out of the hotel, across the sidewalk and into the front passenger seat of Diana’s car. The car pulls into traffic and speeds down the block.

It’s the same game. The same exact game as before. Now it’s happening again, only Maria is the target.

What bothers Maria the most is that Christina went along with it. That Christina was laughing.

She goes back upstairs and has to knock on the door to her room because she forgot to grab the key card in her rush. Donna lets her in, and she doesn’t ask her what happened, doesn’t ask for an explanation, just asks, “Is there anything I can do for you?”

Maria sits down at the table, pulls out the little Hyatt-branded pad of paper and pen, and starts making a list. “I need my mailing address for SHIELD Academy so that I can get my mail redirected. I need to go back to the house at eleven o’clock to get the rest of my things; no one should be home at that time if I’m remembering work schedules right. I don’t know if SHIELD wants to pay for a room at the Hyatt until school starts, but either way, I’ll need a place to stay for the next two weeks.”

Donna takes the other chair, and Maria can feel her gaze even as she glares down at the notepad and scribbles. Finally, she says, “If you don’t mind sleeping on a pull-out couch, you can stay with me. My building has good security, and my home phone doesn’t show up on regular caller ID.”

The pen stills. Maria doesn’t look up. She doesn’t know what to do with this kindness from a near stranger. She just crosses item number one off her list and says, “That’d be great, thanks.”

*

When they arrive at Maria’s house, a few minutes after eleven, there are two cardboard boxes sitting on the front stoop. Maria steps past them and reaches for the front door, key in hand, and then stops. Because the locks have been changed. The keyhole used to be brass, and now it’s steel. She’ll bet everything she owns that the back door has had the same change.

Diana sure can get a lot done in twenty-four hours.

She uses the defunct key, instead, to rip open the two boxes and see what Diana has decided to let her have. It seems to just be the clothes from her hamper. None of her books and knickknacks. None of her karate medals or trophies. Just dirty laundry.

“Hey,” Donna says, and Maria looks up to see her standing by the front door, which is now standing ajar.

“Did you just pick the lock?” Maria asks, impressed.

“Of course not. That would be illegal, and wrong. Want to go in?”

They head inside, and Maria slips upstairs while Donna lingers in the entryway. She’s not really surprised when she gets to her bedroom and finds it’s already been cleared out — just a bare mattress, empty shelves and drawers. It’s the same game, after all. Diana probably took away everything last night as soon as she hung up the phone. She probably got Christina to help.

Maria walks back downstairs and reaches the front room just in time to see Donna come back in from the living room. “Nothing?” Donna asks.

“Nope,” she replies, popping the “p.”

“Anything else you want to do?”

“Like what?”

Donna shrugs. “We could take all the forks. Move all the furniture two inches to the left. Swap the salt and sugar bowls. Add vinegar to the ketchup. Plug up the kitchen sink.”

“No,” Maria says, shaking her head. “Let’s just go.”

They leave the house empty-handed, load the boxes of laundry into the back of Donna’s SUV, and drive away in silence.

They’re on the highway a few minutes later when Maria thinks to ask, “What were you doing in the living room while I was upstairs?”

A guilty look flashes across Donna’s face. She presses her lips together, and then admits, “I hid a potato inside one of the couch cushions. In about three weeks, that room is going to stink to high heaven, and they’ll go crazy trying to figure out why.”

Maria bursts out laughing for the first time in what feels like forever.

Donna glances over at her, and then chuckles. “I couldn’t just leave it alone! I had to do _something_!”

“It’s perfect,” Maria says.

“Join SHIELD,” Donna says. “Travel the world, meet interesting people, and then prank them. It’s practically in the handbook.”

Maria smiles, feeling a lightness she hasn't felt in months, if not years, and looks out her window. _Join SHIELD_. Sounds good to her.

**Author's Note:**

> [Visit my tumblr](http://bit.ly/2mz2lo0) and track the #ukoud tag for fic news, updates, tidbits, and more.


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